


Alexandria

by zinabug



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, I make up lore about names!, Ivy stims and infodumps!, Really all of this was just pulled out of nowhere, it isn't at all sad, it's about her! as a lil kid!, of baby ivy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:15:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24004954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinabug/pseuds/zinabug
Summary: a study of baby Ivy in the library!
Comments: 7
Kudos: 42





	Alexandria

There was a child in the library.

She was sleeping in a nest of blankets behind a bookshelf, among a fort of dusty tomes and scrolls she called her own. 

The caretakers of the library brought her meals and space clothes, a little girl in a white dress, clumsily hemmed, her red hair in a messy braid. She flitted among the bookshelves like a bird, spending hours and maybe days reading every book on one topic, which she would then explain in detail to one of the librarians, waving her hands and bouncing up and down. 

She had a collection of stuffed animals, lumpy bookworms made of old socks and bits of cloth, and she trailed then everywhere in a massive scarf that dragged behind her as she walked the corridors of towering bookshelves, lightly running her hands along the dusty shelves. The biggest bookworm guarded her cave of books, curled around her blanket nest. 

It wasn’t uncommon to see two librarians, one one either side of her, as she skipped and flapped and talked her way to a new arrival of books. They would smile at each other over her bouncing hair and listen to her explain. 

The library had cats. Nobody knew where they had come from, but they ate the mice that chewed on the books, so the librarians let them stay. 

The little girl loved them. She was always followed by at least one cat, pouncing on the end of her bookworm scarf or meowing along the bookshelf. The librarians would find her curled up among a pile of purring scraps of fur, sometimes in her bed and sometimes fallen asleep somewhere in a pile of books. She knew where the cats hid and they showed her their kittens when they were born- they trusted each other. 

Ivy explained the book she had just finished to an audience of six kittens and her pile of stuffed bookworms, sitting in her blanket nest with her weighted blanket over her shoulders, talking with her hands.

The little girl climbed. She climbed on the bookshelves to get more books and save cats, she climbed ladders to perch up high and read. She got the name Ivy from that, one who climbs and grows. 

Ivy chased a cat around the library, wearing a blanket over her shoulders like a cape and tripping librarians as she ran, holding a feather quill like a sword. She was an adventurer, just like in her stories, hunting down a mighty foe in the form of a brownish tabby cat. She made a sword out of a broom handle and stood on a table, pretending to be a ruthless pirate fighting a sea monster - two cats sleeping on the papers of a librarian who smiled at her and moved an inkwell out of the way of her blade. 

Nobody knew where Ivy came from. She was simply in the library, had been since she was three and had just appeared and belonged. She was just the library kid, the little girl, until she started to climb and grow and became Ivy. 

She didn’t become Ivy Alexandria for years. 

She was the library, she grew up with it in her heart and mind. Alexandria wasn’t just the library. It was her. She could name every book and scroll, she knew every corner and hiding place and scratch in the table and floor. 

Ivy Alexandria. One who grows and climbs, the library. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
